I'm not going to disclose our names because it's not important, but I have a story to tell from

1978. I was 14 years old at the time and I grew up in the deep woods of the Catskill Mountains.

My grandfather's 500-acre farm bordered many square miles of state forest.

It was very dense wilderness and it was dotted with old farms that were abandoned years ago.

These details are important to give you an idea of how remote and desolate these woods are.

I've spent my whole life hunting, trapping, and fishing those woods.

This encounter happened in late October on a clear moonlit night.

I was coon hunting with my uncle, who had well-trained coon hounds, and it was quite cold out that night,

and so far the dogs were unusually unsuccessful after two hours of hunting.

Finally, they started barking, and they were hot on a trail.

We were a mile from my grandfather's farm when we started in the direction of the

dog's barking. They were across the gullion up on the next ridge. My uncle and I were walking

up a dirt road that would take us to an old abandoned farmhouse. It was a straight walk down

across the gullion up to the ridge where the dogs got that raccoon

in a tree judging by their barks, and they were steady and in one location.

By now it was 2 a.m. and we were 200 yards from the farmhouse. I noticed loud footsteps 100 yards to my right in the woods. I didn't think

much of it at first because I figured it was a big deer or a bear. But as we continued up the road,

I noticed it getting closer, and I could tell that it was on two feet. At first, I thought it was

another hunter, but that made no sense because no one

hunts late at night in the woods unless they're both raccoon hunting like us. There were no

other dogs in the woods and that's when I noticed the steps were heavy with the crunch of

branches. Now I asked my uncle if he heard what I did and he said

...